Political Cybersquatting Or Free Speech?

Although plenty of people have purchased politically linked domain names as a form of protest in the past, now they're being used as part of organized campaigns. In Maryland's 8th district Congressional race, Republican candidate Charles R. Floyd purchased three domain names (VanHollen2004.com/net/org) that one might think would represent Democrat incumbent Rep. Chris Van Hollen. Instead, these sites carry criticism and a bit of mockery. Floyd says Van Hollen should've registered these domain names himself, and previously used the same tactic in the primary. Is this cybersquatting, or is it a fair expression of political speech?

Comments

Follow the money

[jfarnold]

Only the person with the most money will be able to hold the domain in any legal kerfuffle. Look at what happened to etoys.com.

Re:Follow the money

[DigitumDei]

I tend to disagree, free speech says you are free to voice your opinion. Does it state you are free to disguise it, or trick people into hearing/reading it?

I agree this is VERY arguable, which is why I called it dubious rather than wrong in my previous post. I just think that to draw an analogy, this would be like an 19th century politician disguising himself as the opposition, getting up onto a soapbox and totally destroying the oppositions reputation and then ripping off the disguise at the end and say, "hey, by the way, its me, not him".

Okay, maybe a bit extreme, but it is similar. :)

Freedom of speech should be the freedom to express your views as you, not as your opponent. And putting a disclaimer on the site (which he has done) is not good enough in my opinion. He has already lead the person to the site under false pretences.

Hard to say.

[DrJonesAC2]

This is just wrong. But I can't really think of a fair way of going about fixing the problem. Do you force people to give up their domain names because they are misleading? Tough to say.

It's clearly cybersquatting...

[osmethnee]

It's clearly cybersquatting, but the real question is whether cybersquatting can/should be protected as freedom of speech.

A lack of class

[laetus]

Personally, I think the cybersquatting shows a lack of class. I voted against Van Hollen in the last election, but I don't condone what his opponent is doing for one reason, in that you shouldn't work to silence your opponent in a political election in a republic.

Floyd is wrong on this one, big time. By attempting to suppress Van Hollen's website and ideas, he's tarnishing his own reputation.

Disclaimer

[Pemdas]

So long as the holder of the domain makes it clear he is not affiliated with the compaign that the URL would imply, I don't see a problem with it. Looking over this site, I think it's sufficiently clear that it's not actually being run by the candidate being mocked.

On the other hand, looking over this site and seeing how it's done make me dislike Floyd more than Van Hollen. But I'm not in that district, so...

I don't see how this is significantly different than www.gwbush.com (currently defunct), although gwbush.com was a bit cleverer.

Re:Should have linked....

[beaverfever]

This site has a lot of vague accusations without real facts and/or background to back them up. I'm not saying any of the content on this site is correct or incorrect, but you'd have to be pretty gullible to believe any of it presented as it is.

Just by scanning it quickly I suspect some of it may be misleading. For example, saying he is anti-business could mean he has voted in favour of some environmental control (which by the standard of many is 'anti-business'). Also, the section listing items he has voted for doesn't mention that these vague, nasty sounding votes could have been for bigger, worthy bills with silly amendments buried in them, as happens all the time.

The content of this site reminds me that in modern US politics candidates for office can say just about anything they want about an opponent and the onus of clarification or disproving any misleading or false accusations is on the accused.

I can't say whether or not the practice of using the URL is valid or not, but I would consider the content of the site to be piss-poor at best, misleading at worst. Actually, the worst would be bald-faced lies, but I'm not going to start checking facts. Regardless, there is no shame in US politics today.

its one thing to register the domain..

[Exter-C]

Its one thing to register the domain names in question. Its another thing to actually have traffic to those domain names. In this case hes had an abundance of free publicity and the search engines/slashdot affect would do the site a world of good. Generally this wouldnt have been the case with out the large press/publicity/scam campaign that is currently occuring.

maybe I should register a few thousand political domain names.. then link them all to eachother.. create a post on slashdot mentioning it.. then change the content on the pages to something thats worth while.. then the search engines will redirect viagra requests.. oops i mean legit traffic to my site.

Re:The anti-Van Hollen site is junk

[Shakrai]

Any politician who claims that his opponent "votes for terrorists" instantly loses any credibility with me.

Too bad they usually win anyway. This is where I start to get disillusioned with American politics -- not when third parties are excluded from the debates. But when idiots like Karl Rove can run an advertisement accusing somebody like John McCain (five + years in the Hanoi Hilton) or Max Cleland (lost three limbs in Vietnam) of being unpatriotic... and it fucking works!

Bah! It's sickening.

Technology will nullify the legal issues.

[Anonymous Coward]

I really believe the next generation of search engines/browsers will make remembering URLs unnecessary, fixing the current problems with cybersquatting.

As an analogy, when I was growing up, I could remember four or five dozen phone numbers of friends/family/whatnot. Now, I could list about three. I would speculate that my great-grandmother could do the same with mailing addresses, yet now my mom would be lost without using mail merge for her Christmas cards.

I, personally, don't know exactly how we are going to jump past bookmarks and Google, but I have no doubt some creative UI engineer with figure it out, since the same problem has been solved before.

Cybersquatting is not really to biggest issue, either. The more basic problem is commonality of names. What does the company 'Delta' mean to you? Travel? Electronics? Faucets? Power tools? It's like asking what 'Dave Smith' means. There are many in the phonebook, but only one or two are significant to you and your cellphone knows the difference.

What we have today is like the first generation of speeddial. That improved, and so will browsers. It won't be long before your browser can make a decent guess at where you actually want to go. (No, that is not a Microsoft plug...they just happened to hire a good slogan writer. "Where do you want to go today" is a very futuristic question.)

It's Political Speech

[abb3w]

I would say that, in with the dozens of other election reforms that are needed, we should restrict the purchasing of domain names, search results, etc. which imply one candidate and promote another (or attack the promoted candidate).

I'd disagree with your specific restrictions. However, I'd suggest requiring that any such political site include a "Paid for by the Joe Blah for Senate Campaign" on each page, with a link to a web page version of the usual "I'm the candidate, and I approve this message". If put up by a PAC, use "Paid for by Citizens Against Jim Mumble", with a link to a page stating the group's charter, directorship, and business office. If put up by a private citizen, "Paid for by BillyBob Doe", linked to a page informing people that they are doing this as a private citizen, saying whether they are a registered voter, and if so, noting if they are registered in a precinct that will vote on this election.